Today, the idea of an American going aloft in a Russian spaceship is as common as Russian tourists at the Statue of Liberty or American tourists at the Kremlin.
But sixty years ago, the notion of a man going into space — Soviet or American — was as unlikely as a man going into space. Up until April 12, 1961, it was just the stuff of science fiction.
Presently, it is hard to believe there was a real "Space Race" between America and the USSR. It was initiated in many ways by our young, hyper-competitive president, John F. Kennedy.
Of course, America itself, coming out of WW II, was hyper-competitive. Americans were used to winning: We were the first to recognize human rights and, those humans told the government what to do, instead of the government telling the people what to do.
We were the first to develop a light bulb; we were to first to fly heavier-than-air airplanes. We were the first to dig the Panama Canal after the French had failed.
We developed a cure for malaria, we won the First World War; we won the Second World War. We developed the A-bomb and the H-bomb first. We broke the sound barrier first. Americans believed they would always be first.
However, with the October 1957 launch of Sputnik by the Russians, we took second place to the Soviets. We could have been first had we launched Vanguard on our Jupiter rocket. But Jupiter was military and those in power thought military hardware would offend the world community.
Instead, in December, the government launched a Vanguard rocket with a satellite, live on national television, to no avail. The rocket exploded in a world-humiliating disaster that was dubbed "Kaputnik."
Americans imagined the Soviets could drop nuclear bombs on them like rocks from a highway overpass though this was virtually impossible.
All Americans were mad and embarrassed. Along the way, the Soviets were the first to launch an artificial satellite, the first to orbit a live animal, the first man in space, the first woman in space, the first three-man crew, and the first to perform a spacewalk.
Much of Soviet success was attributable to the Chief Designer, Pavlovich Korolev. He was the real genius behind the Soviet program, although he died in 1966 when the Soviet space program began to falter.
We finally placed a satellite into orbit in January of 1958, with the successful launch of Explorer One.
Then, in July of 1958, President Dwight Eisenhower created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to better coordinate America's efforts beyond Earth's atmosphere.
Now, the race to send the first American into space was on. Yet again, we lost to the Soviets. Curiously, they had overestimated their needs and built giant rockets that could hurl big satellites into space. These rockets were referred to as big and dumb but they did the trick
Yuri Gagarin cut a handsome figure. He looked like a rugged hero. He was the son of a carpenter on a collective farm.
Gagarin's career began as a molder at a trade school near Moscow but he also took a course in flying. Upon completion of the course, he registered in the Soviet Air Force as a trainee, graduating in 1957. He was now in the Soviet space program and was selected for the first launch ever, as it turned out, of a human being in space.
His spacecraft named Vostok was successfully launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome using one of those big, dumb rockets at just after 9 a.m. Moscow time on April 12, 1961. The launch was of course done in secret as opposed to the openness of America's space program — We broadcast everything.
America's mood sank.
Gagarin's Vostok space capsule weighed an astonishing four and three-quarters tons. America's Mercury spacecraft weighed far less.
He orbited the Earth for one hour and 25 minutes reaching an apogee of 187 miles above the globe. He never actually piloted the craft, guided instead by automatic systems. He only spoke once from orbit saying "Flight is proceeding normally; I am well."
Gagarin landed to international fame. For a brief moment, the Soviets were winning the space race.
He had parades, statues, streets named after him and stamps printed in his honor. He was awarded the Order of Lenin. He was also a Hero of the Soviet Union.
Naturally, the Soviets would never let him fly in space again. But he did undertake a new mission of training other cosmonauts.
He was killed in a plane crash in 1976, when the jet he and another pilot were flying malfunctioned. Gagarin had a state funeral and, in high honor, his ashes were placed in the Kremlin Wall.
Only several months after the Gagarin launch, America launched Col. Alan B. Shepard on his suborbital flight. The space race was back on in full.
A year later, John Glenn took off on his famous three-orbit historic mission. The first free man had achieved orbit, no longer the domain of the communists.
President Kennedy proclaimed in 1962, to thunderous applause at Rice University in Texas, "We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained and new rights to be won and they must be won and used for the progress of all people..." challenging Americans to win the space race.
He said further, "But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why thirty-five years ago fly the Atlantic?... We choose to go to the moon!
"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills. Because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win…"
Nine years later, an American named Neil Armstrong planted the American flag on the moon. Ironically, it was President Kennedy's assassination that impelled America to fulfill his goal, of landing an American on the moon by the end of the decade.
America had won the space race.
Craig Shirley is Chairman of Citizens for the Republic. Read Craig Shirley's Reports — More Here.
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